


While You Were Sleeping

by Tobi_Misfit



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 03:54:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4248393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tobi_Misfit/pseuds/Tobi_Misfit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How will it feel if I never tell you?<br/>Will I be able to stop loving you then?</p>
<p>Sherlock and John are very different men. But this does not stop them from falling in love with one another while they sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Sherlock**  
Sometime during his later teen years, Sherlock Holmes had come to the conclusion that he really would be better off not engaging in any of this “romantic involvement” business. This decision came after his parents had seperated and he and Mycroft had stayed up late on countless nights whispering to each other to distract from their parent’s screaming rows. It had come after Mycroft had told him about how unsatisfactory his own first sexual experience was, and after the two brothers had began their steady descent from reasonably close to a mutual cool distaste. The fact that his teenage hormones had been racing madly at the time was of no consequence - in the years that followed, Sherlock met what needs his body demanded to be met when it demanded them, and that was all. The few times that he did encounter someone he did not find to be incredibly vulgar, incredibly stupid, or incredibly painful to be in the company of, Sherlock quickly steered his thoughts away from any kind of deeper feeling. And, whereupon it became apparent that the other party was becoming attached to him (as rare as that was with Sherlock’s attitude), he would abruptly cease all contact with them. After university, and the times around it that Sherlock preferred not to speak of once he had left them, the very concept of romantic interest lost any kind of importance to him. He became so focused on his work that relations with other people didn’t matter, if they ever really had at all. And that suited him perfectly well. The work kept his mind occupied, kept his cravings at bay, and that was all he wanted from his life. His contact at the Yard gave him increasingly more interesting cases, and despite all his personal failings (people pointed them out far too often for Sherlock to be as unaware of them as he claimed to be), Lestrade actually seemed to like him. Or at the very least, tolerate him, which after all was all that Sherlock wanted out of him.

But then came the afternoon when Mike Stamford took it upon himself to find Sherlock a flatmate.

The man Mike brought with him was short, strongly built, and haunted like few men Sherlock had seen since leaving his own ghosts behind. When he left the room after their first exchange Sherlock had to take a moment to quell the thought that had been inexplicably pestering him since the moment he’d made eye contact with the army vet.  
_It’s come to an end. This isolation. That man is the end of it._  
_Someday, you are going to be in love with John Watson._  
It was ludicrous, of course. Sherlock didn’t do love. He didn’t do anything but the Work, that was all he was, all he had. It was all he wanted.  
He hated the fact that sounded like a lie, even in his own head.

 **John**  
John Watson was a doctor. First and foremost. Before he was a soldier or a veteran or even a brother and son. John Watson was a doctor, and a fine one at that, if you asked him. Not that people did. People didn’t ask him much of anything really, they were too busy tip-toeing around the bullet hole, the PTSD, the short temper. Before the army, before the guns and the fighting and the howls of pain, John had wanted nothing more than to help people. Before then he simply had, without even meaning to; he’d picked up dropped books and bandaged scraped knees and mended broken hearts with soft kisses and kind words. John was a healer, he always had been, and he always would be.

The day that he met Sherlock Holmes was the day that he found the first man he’d ever wanted to heal without even knowing what in him was hurting.

Running into Mike had been an accident, and until they’d stopped by St Bart’s, a regretful one. Because John was a proud man, and the state he was in was far from worthy of being proud. But Sherlock had looked at him for mere moments and been able to read his life story from the tan at his wrists and set of his shoulders and that was easily the most incredible thing John had ever seen. Which is saying a lot, coming from a man who had escorted heavily pregnant women from burning villages and delivered their war time babies. Sherlock was a proud man, too. Anyone who looked at him could see that. It would have been easy to describe him as arrogant, but the thought never even crossed John’s mind. He was too busy being lead on the wildest adventure of his life since he’d been invalided home, too busy being wrapped up in the sheer glory and energy that was this man, too busy moving in with him as fast as he damn well could. Because like hell he was going to be given another opportunity like Sherlock Holmes. And like hell there would be another human on this earth that he felt so deeply, immediately connected with as he did Sherlock.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Sherlock**  
The first moment came even though Sherlock had been trying to prevent it. He’d been trying to focus on the case, on John’s limp, on anything but the man himself. And yet here he was, leaning against the wall at the bottom of the stairs, laughing like he hadn’t in years. And there beside him was John, looking as though he’d just discovered the meaning of life. And when the two laughing men’s eyes met all the breath got knocked out of Sherlock’s lungs all at once. Because Christ, the man was beautiful, and how was Sherlock supposed to deal with a thought like that? He was saved from answering that question by a knock on the door, and as John went to answer it Sherlock vowed he wouldn’t let himself slip up like that again.

Unfortunately it wasn’t something he could help. 

Sherlock had long been in the habit of sleeping very little, and having another person around while he slept was not about to make a difference on that account. John did not seem to realise this at first, and in an apparent effort to keep Sherlock company one night not long after they’d moved in together, John ended up falling asleep in his armchair long before Sherlock had even begun to contemplate slumber. This didn’t bother the detective - he had been turning something over in his mind for a while and the trailing off of John’s chatter should only have helped to focus his concentration on the matter. Except, for some reason, it did not. Instead, Sherlock found his mind wandering rapidly away from the matter at hand and towards the sleeping man opposite him.   
 _I really ought to wake him up and send him to bed. He’ll get a crick sleeping like that,_  Sherlock thought. Rather than do that, though, Sherlock sat were he was, quietly studying the way John’s chest rose and fell with his breaths. The tiny flickers of his eyelids, the total peace on the other man’s face as he slept. The gentle slump in his shoulders and the way his hair had fallen across his forehead. As he watched, recording every detail, Sherlock’s own chest tightened in a way that was all too much like something he didn’t want to feel. Sherlock stood up abruptly, knocking his forgotten cup of tea from the arm of his chair to the floor, where it promptly shattered, spraying cold tea and china shards everywhere. John awoke with a start. Sherlock stalked from the room before John could even begin to question the mess, leaving it to him to clean.   
 _It’s nothing. I don’t feel that any more, for anyone. There’s no evidence I ever did._

**John**  
John needed a job, and a shag, and maybe a girlfriend, and he was reasonably sure that once he had those things he would start to feel a little bit human again. Life with Sherlock had turned out to be exactly what he needed, but it was screamingly far from normal. And the Watson’s had always been an extremely normal kind of family. Normal was habit as much as it was comfort for John. So normal was what he went out of his way to acheive. When his quest for employment also happened to lead to the possibility of his other two objectives, John was too caught up in this prospect to really question Sherlock’s motives in suggesting the circus for the date with Sarah. As soon as he heard the man’s voice over his shoulder at the ticket booth however, John realised he ought to have been more dubious of the man’s help with anything. But by the time all was said and done and the two of them had staggered up the stairs to their flat, John had forgotten to be angry about it. He shuffled into the kitchen for no more than a moment, and by the time he returned to the living room Sherlock was sprawled across the sofa, one long arm tossed over the back, utterly asleep. Soft, whispery almost - snores were coming from his lips. John had never seen the other man so relaxed. There was always so much going on in that fantastic brain of his that the sight of him seemingly without a care in the world gave the doctor pause. John had been gazing at the sleeping man for several long minutes before he caught himself.   
 _Oh no. Oh, no, John. This is terribly timed._    
He shook his head, rubbing his knuckles between his eyes. He was just tired, that was all. Desperately tired, and he’d been hoping for a shag without getting one for too long. John fetched a blanket and laid it carefully over Sherlock’s unconscious form, making sure to cover the arm on the back of the sofa. Even as he denied himself, John couldn’t help but think how nice it was to see Sherlock without that dark flicker of pain in the corners.

**Sherlock**  
Waking up with a blanket over him that he had not put there was an unfamiliar and confusing sensation for Sherlock. It took him several seconds to put together how it must have got there. When he did, a smile curled over his lips for a moment before he could wipe it away. There was no need to overthink it. It was just another gesture that came naturally to a kind man such as John. Even so, Sherlock wrapped the blanket around his shoulders before going up to bed, and kept it with him as he returned to sleep. 


End file.
